Pochettino’s Claim: Spurs as the True 2016-17 Champions?
Mauricio Pochettino has never lifted the Premier League trophy. He now believes he should have.
The former Tottenham manager, who led Spurs to a club-record 86 points and second place in 2016-17, argues that Chelsea’s title that season is tainted – and that the Premier League should, in effect, recognise his side as the rightful champions.
His reasoning is blunt.
"If they admitted they broke the rules, the Premier League title was for the second-best team," Pochettino said.
This all stems from a Premier League investigation into Chelsea’s secret payments between 2011 and 2018 – £47m routed to unregistered agents and third parties to help secure major transfers. The deals covered a roll call of modern Chelsea stars: Eden Hazard, Samuel Eto'o, Willian, Ramires, David Luiz, Andre Schurrle and Nemanja Matic.
Four of them – Hazard, Willian, Luiz and Matic – were at the heart of Antonio Conte’s title-winning machine in 2016-17.
Chelsea have already been fined by Uefa, the Premier League and the Football Association. Pochettino’s stance cuts through the legalese: money is one thing, sporting punishment is another. And in his eyes, the balance is badly off.
The Numbers Behind the Anger
The sense of injustice is not just a Tottenham problem.
Everton and Nottingham Forest have taken points deductions for relatively small profit and sustainability breaches. Chelsea, meanwhile, used undeclared payments while assembling a squad good enough to dominate England and Europe: two Premier League titles (2014-15, 2016-17), two FA Cups (2011-12, 2017-18), the EFL Cup (2014-15) and the Europa League (2018-19).
At the same time, the game still waits for a verdict on Manchester City’s 115 charges for alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules. Against that backdrop, Pochettino’s argument lands with extra force.
So does he have a case? And how much did those four Chelsea players actually tilt the 2016-17 title race?
Hazard: The Poster Boy of a Tainted Era
If one name symbolises this saga, it is Eden Hazard.
Chelsea beat most of Europe’s elite to sign him from Lille for £32m in 2012. According to the investigation, seven payments totalling £5.6m were then made between May 2013 and August 2016 to an unregistered agent “for the benefit of the club in connection with Hazard's transfer”.
Hazard’s impact in 2016-17 was enormous.
He started 36 league games, scored 16 goals and delivered five assists. Only Cesar Azpilicueta played more often; only Diego Costa scored more, with 20. Hazard was Chelsea’s player of the year, made the PFA team of the year and was shortlisted for PFA player of the year.
Strip it back to cold, decisive moments and the picture is just as stark. Hazard directly shaped results in at least four fixtures:
- Scored the opener in a 2-1 win over West Ham in August
- Scored and assisted in a 2-0 victory over Southampton in November
- Hit the first goal in another 2-1 win over West Ham in March
- Scored both goals in a 2-0 win over Manchester City in April
You can reasonably argue those contributions were worth 10 points.
This was his fifth season at Stamford Bridge, not a new signing for 2016-17. But Pochettino’s point is broader: if Chelsea bent rules to land a player of Hazard’s calibre, what chance did Spurs have in that market by playing it straight?
Willian: The One That Got Away
If Hazard was the symbol, Willian is the sore spot.
Chelsea hijacked Spurs’ move for the Brazilian in 2013, signing him from Anzhi Makhachkala. The investigation found that transfer fee payments totalling £19.2m went to two unregistered entities in connection with his deal and that of Samuel Eto’o.
By 2016-17, Willian was not even a guaranteed starter. Nineteen of his 34 league appearances came from the bench.
Yet he still delivered eight goals and eight assists – and, crucially, swung tight games.
Key contributions included:
- An assist in a 1-0 win at Sunderland in December
- Two goals in a 4-2 victory over Stoke later that month
- The opening goal in a 2-1 win at Stoke in March
- An assist for the winner in a 4-3 thriller against Watford in May
Those moments helped Chelsea bank eight points. Points Spurs can argue might have been theirs had Willian not been snatched away at the last minute – with the help of the payments now under scrutiny.
For Pochettino, that is not a theoretical grievance. It is a concrete example of how secret money can reshape a title race.
Luiz, Matic and the Web of Advantage
The investigation also uncovered £5.1m of payments between 2012 and 2015 “to provide talent identification services in certain European countries”. These were linked to the registrations of Ramires, Luiz, Schurrle and Matic.
By 2016-17, both Luiz and Matic were back at Chelsea for second spells. The original 2011 deal involving Luiz and Matic swapping between Chelsea and Benfica was examined, creating a link between those earlier arrangements and the players’ later influence.
On the pitch, Matic played 35 league games, starting 30. He scored once and supplied seven assists. Only one of those attacking returns directly changed a result – but it hurt Pochettino personally: an assist for Chelsea’s first goal in a 2-1 win over Tottenham in November.
Luiz, named in the PFA team of the season, started 33 league matches and scored once, the opener in a 1-1 draw at Liverpool in January. His value went beyond goals: he anchored Conte’s back three, organising a defence that allowed Chelsea to turn tight contests into routine wins.
Add up the influence of Hazard, Willian, Luiz and Matic, and you get a spine built on players whose registrations are now linked to undisclosed payments.
Spurs’ Near-Perfection, Chelsea’s Ruthless Edge
The raw league table still matters.
Tottenham were relentless in the run-in, winning 12 of their final 13 matches and finishing on 86 points – a club record. In most eras, that wins you the title. It would have been enough in 2015-16, when Leicester took the crown with 81 points.
Conte’s Chelsea, though, matched that relentlessness and then some. They won 11 of their last 13 to finish on 93 points. They lost more games than Spurs – five to four – but the champions stacked up 30 wins to Tottenham’s 26.
Spurs’ problem lay at the start. They went unbeaten in their first 11 league games but drew six of them, winning only five. Those dropped points left them chasing Chelsea for the rest of the season.
Pochettino might look at the margins and see Hazard and Willian staring back at him. Between them, they produced decisive attacking contributions in eight matches that led directly to points. Shift even a fraction of that output elsewhere and the title race changes shape.
Beyond the numbers sits the larger question of sporting advantage. Signing Hazard and others helped Chelsea win trophies, qualify regularly for the Champions League and build a virtuous circle of success and attraction. Tottenham, operating within the rules, could not tap into that same gravitational pull.
Legacy, Love and a Title That Never Was
Pochettino’s stance is sharpened by his own journey.
He spent one bruising, brief season as Chelsea head coach in 2023-24, never fully convincing the fanbase. Chelsea finished sixth. Neither side will reminisce fondly about that year.
Tottenham is different. Between 2014 and 2019 he built a side that thrilled a stadium and redefined expectations: Premier League runners-up, a Champions League final in 2018-19, and that 86-point haul which still stands as a club record. He remains adored in north London in a way he never was in west London.
So do Spurs fans back his claim?
"Of course I do," said Chris Paouros, co-founder and co-chair of Proud Lilywhites and Women of The Lane. "He could tell me the moon was made of halloumi and I'd nod along.
"The Spurs 2016-17 team was the best in the league by most measures: best attack, best defence, fewest defeats, unbeaten at home in the last season of the old White Hart Lane.
If the playing field was tilted, the least you can do is ask the question."
Paouros accepts that no title is coming in the post. The point, she says, is that "rules have to mean something, whoever benefits".
Crime, Punishment and the Next Storm
Not everyone is focused on hypothetical trophies. For some, it is about principle.
"It would still be something that Spurs fans would celebrate," said Tristan Foot, secretary of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust. "A victory over Chelsea, albeit 10 years after the event."
But the anger runs deeper than one rivalry.
"It means that to an extent crime does pay in football," Foot added. "And that's the serious underlying part of all this.
"During the transfer window they were signing players that we had no chance of winning, the obvious example being Willian.
The Premier League has got to be better about imposing sporting sanctions and making sure that its rules actually have teeth."
With the Chelsea investigations now closed, there will be no retrospective trophy for Pochettino, no open-top bus for that Spurs side, no asterisk in the record books.
The next reckoning lies elsewhere. When the long, tangled Manchester City case finally ends, will the clubs left in their slipstream feel any more satisfied than Tottenham do about 2016-17 – or will English football be left asking the same, uncomfortable question about what a title is really worth?
